Nuance Introduces Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition, Advanced Capabilities Accelerate EHR Meaningful Use

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today unveiled Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition, a new solution designed for large physician practices and hospitals as they accelerate Meaningful Use of electronic health record (EHR) systems. As the newest addition to the Dragon Medical family, the world’s most popular, real-time, medical speech recognition solution, Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition adds enterprise-class features, including enhanced support for Citrix-based EHR environments and a new centralized management console. Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition’s significant new management capabilities will deliver better economic results, lowering the total cost of ownership for large scale, front-end speech recognition deployments that operate seamlessly within EHR workflows.

“The introduction of Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition coincides with many health systems’ decisions to purchase and deploy EHR systems as they invest to achieve Meaningful Use incentives”

Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition empowers clinicians to navigate, dictate and correct medical documents directly within an EHR entirely by voice, even when operating within a Citrix environment. With the HITECH Act’s Meaningful Use criteria now finalized, healthcare organizations are moving forward with their EHR strategy and are increasingly turning to speech recognition as a best-practice tool to facilitate EHR adoption and promote ongoing EHR success. Today, more than 150,000 clinicians have chosen Dragon Medical as an integral part of their clinical documentation workflow. As shown through a recent study at Fallon Clinic, Dragon Medical can, among other benefits, improve physician satisfaction with generating notes within an EHR by as much as 57 percent. Dragon Medical can also improve note quality by more than 25 percent; see full study results here: Fallon Clinic Dragon Medical Study.

“The introduction of Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition coincides with many health systems’ decisions to purchase and deploy EHR systems as they invest to achieve Meaningful Use incentives,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, healthcare, Nuance Communications, Inc. “Without Dragon Medical as a key EHR input and navigation aide, we believe healthcare organizations will struggle to introduce EHRs as standard tool amongst clinicians due to reduced efficiency and lower quality patient notes. With this new Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition introduction, healthcare organizations can leverage speech recognition in the most cost effective way to accelerate enterprise-wide EHR adoption by empowering physicians to document care in their own words.”

Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition works with all major commercial EHR systems; many of the solution’s software enhancements were designed in direct collaboration with leading EHR vendors, such as Cerner, Epic and Allscripts, to provide enhanced interoperability in both thick client and Citrix-based EHR deployments.

“Speech recognition is an important component in helping our clients maximize their EHR investment,” said Tom Herzog, Cerner vice president of IT and medical devices. “The voice enabled EHR, which leverages Dragon Medical integrated with Cerner Millennium® solutions, enables clinicians to optimize and streamline the creation of high-quality, real-time patient documentation.”

Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition is exclusively designed for hospitals and physician practices with 25 or more physicians. It is available through Nuance and a group of specially certified authorized resellers. The Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition offers the following unique features:

Improved Support for Citrix-based EHR Environment – Physicians across the enterprise are empowered to use speech recognition to fully control and document within the EHR. vSync, a new technology from Nuance, creates a virtual channel between the PC and a Citrix-based EHR client application, allowing physicians to switch seamlessly back-and-forth between dictation and typing as needed, play back dictation to hear what was recorded, correct medical notes via voice commands, and more. With this synchronized connection, Dragon Medical can replace the common and time-consuming EHR tasks that many physicians struggle to complete through sole use of the keyboard and mouse.
Centralized Enterprise Management Tools – IT departments gain access to the new Nuance Management Console, a server-based management tool that provides the necessary capabilities to administer Dragon Medical as an enterprise IT tool alongside the EHR. Organizations can manage users and user options centrally, monitor license activity, distribute macros and automate software updates across the user base.
Automated Updates – NuanceLink™ is an active link between the Nuance Management Console and the Nuance Update Server, which provides content updates to a provider organization. This connection provides updates to vocabularies, including new macro lists, medication lists, diagnoses lists, and disease lists, via a live feed. Administrators can push all updates to users with just one click.
Central User Profile Management – For the first time, IT departments can centrally manage individual Dragon Medical users’ profiles from the Nuance Management Console. New security login and passwords, only available in Network Edition, ensure that when clinicians approach a workstation to dictate patient records that their voice is easily and quickly recognized. A new version of the Language Model/Acoustic Model Optimizer now runs offline while physicians dictate, eliminating potential dictation downtime and accelerating overall physician dictation accuracy.

“We’ve been using Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition alongside our Cerner EMR since April and have seen significant benefits. Not only are clinicians empowered to complete comprehensive, high quality notes in real-time by speaking, but many tasks associated with the system are now automated,” said Steven H. Zuber, M.D., Internal Medicine, Methodist HealthWest, Chief Medical Information Officer, Methodist Physicians Clinic. “For example, user profiles are automatically loaded. Now, clinicians can access their Dragon Medical profile and user settings quickly without having to re-select preferences. We’ve also noticed that the profiles are optimized because of a number of updates occurring in the background. The optimization has simplified problem diagnosis and repair, improved recognition accuracy and most importantly reduced the time it takes to create and finalize a patient’s medical record. Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition works very well within a Citrix-based EHR environment; on average I’ve been able to save 30 minutes per day on documentation, carving out anywhere between 30 seconds to one minute from each record I create.”

Dragon Medical users also have access to nearly 80 medical vocabularies and regional accent support models. Additionally, Dragon Medical offers customizable commands like Voice Shortcuts and DragonTemplates that help clinicians streamline the creation of Progress Notes, HPI Assessments, Consultation and Referral Letters, as well as other Care Plan documentation. For a full list of features found in all versions of the Dragon Medical family of solutions please visit: http://www.nuance.com/healthcare/products/dragon_medical.asp

“Dragon Medical has become standard issue for many healthcare provider organizations deploying an EHR, improving physician productivity and satisfaction while simultaneously reducing transcription labor costs and improving the quality of the clinical documentation,” says Peter Durlach, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing for Nuance Healthcare. “Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition sets a new standard for enterprise-class, real-time speech recognition. This new product is the next step in our ongoing commitment to deliver world-class speech solutions that healthcare organizations can roll out in a true enterprise class model and deploy on thinner desktop and mobile computing platforms like we have already done with our Dragon Medical Mobile applications on the Apple iPhone.”

Availability:

For hospitals and physician practices with 25 or more physicians, Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition will be available in September 2010 for purchase. For purchases made by September 30^th, customers will receive the Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition at a promotional price. A special license conversion pricing program has also been created for existing customers of the Dragon Medical Enterprise Edition. The Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition will be available only from Nuance and a limited number of authorized Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition resellers. For further information, please call 1-866-748-9537 or visit: http://www.nuance.com/products/dragon-medical-enterprise-network-edition/

Effective October 1, 2010, Dragon Medical Enterprise Edition will no longer be offered for sale to new hospital customers or physician practices with 25 or more physicians. Nuance will continue to actively support existing Dragon Medical Enterprise Edition customers and will provide additional add-on licenses for purchase. Prior to October 1, 2010, customers can purchase Dragon Medical Enterprise Edition under the current pricing model.

For physician practices with less than 25 physicians, Nuance will continue to provide the Dragon Medical Box and Small Practice Editions. In addition, existing customers in this segment who have purchased Dragon Medical Enterprise Edition will be able to continue to purchase additional licenses. Dragon Medical Enterprise Network Edition has not been designed for and will not be available for physician practices with less than 25 physicians. For further information, please contact your authorized Dragon Medical reseller.

Nuance’s Healthcare Business

Nuance’s healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication solutions enable healthcare provider organizations to improve financial performance, enhance patient care, and increase patient safety. With more than 10,000 healthcare provider organization customers and 450,000 clinicians worldwide, Nuance has the experience and solutions that meet the individual needs of any size healthcare provider organization.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance, vSync, NuanceLink, Dragon, and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.